Attack on Titan Season 2 Episode 28: "Southwestward" Review

Episode 28 picks up directly where we left off previously, with Connie shocked by the events he sees occurring around his home village. Several other characters also share screen time this week, making for another slower paced episode. Although many interesting points were made throughout the episode, it’s slow pace and lack of a strong central plot line caused things to feel less exciting this time around.

Unlike Sasha’s episode last week, Connie gets considerably less screen time but, the episode does manage to drop some new information before his segment ends. It seems that even normal titans might posses the ability to talk. Episode 28 did this a lot: tossing out interesting and sometimes shocking bits of development without a lot of follow-up. It’s a missed opportunity that we didn't learn more about Connie while he was in his home town, but I’m still finding myself excited for what this new revelation means going forward.

It turns out there is more to Christa than meets the eye, as we find out she is connected to the church. This certainly caught me by surprise, as I wasn’t expecting someone so young to have such a meaningful place within such an old religion. It also made for a powerful moment, and one I quite enjoyed, as the priest finally saw what happens to the populace when titans attack. It was well executed, and the camera lingered on the priest just long enough for us to see that realization hit him before he finally revealed the information about Christa.

While it was nice to learn more about Christa and the titans, the episode lacked a strong central focus. This is a flip from last week where we had a very similarly paced episode, but it instead had Sasha as a leading focus, giving us a strong story to get behind. With how last week’s episode ended I had expected Connie to take the spotlight this week, but his time was limited and instead the episode bounced around between several perspectives. While it didn’t ruin the overall quality of the episode, it certainly didn’t help either as things felt a little too slow and unfocused for an Attack on Titan episode.

I’m a fan of the occasional quieter episode, where we focus not on the combat but instead on dialogue and connections between characters. With this season having such a split focus, it’s important that we get to know the side characters like Christa and Sasha beyond just their fighting prowess. I am starting to wonder, though, just how long they plan to wait before really kicking Season 2 into high gear. With the way things ended this week, it looks like I won’t have to wait much longer, but I am worried what kind of long-term impact these slower episodes will have as we get later into the season.

The Verdict

Slaying titans is a satisfying, bloody mess thanks to fun and fast combat. The meat of the campaign follows the anime through fun missions and features varied playstyles for each of the characters that matched their personalities well. While the epilogue suffers from serious pacing problems, being able to get through some of its more tedious missions with friends make the extra content a little less of a pain.